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 YAMAHA
TAKES A CLEAN SWEEP OF THE PODIUM AT ERMELO TOYOTA 400
Proudly Bidvest Yamaha’s defending National Off Road Champion, Jade Gutzeit, put in a sterling performance, despite enduring the pain of a broken bone in his foot, to take the overall victory at the second round of seven of the National Off Road Championship, the Ermelo Toyota 400, this past weekend. Gutzeit rode his Proudly Bidvest Yamaha YZ 450 F into second position on Friday’s qualifying time trial, a mere one second behind youngster Michael Creevy (Actnet/Liquimoly/Yamaha Support Yamaha YZ 250 F), who impressed many an observer with his speed on the day. Gutzeit’s team mate, Louwrens Mahoney (Proudly Bidvest Yamaha YZ 250) took the third step of the qualifying podium a mere nine seconds behind the two pace setters, whilst Full Throttle Yamaha’s Ruan Roberts (YZ 250) and Mr Price Yamaha’s Marc Torlage (YZ 250 F) secured Yamaha’s dominance at the top of the field with the fourth and fifth best qualifying times respectively. Salleys Yamaha’s Wade Blaauw (YZ 450 F) qualified in tenth position overall, giving Yamaha a dominant six positions out of the top ten contenders for Saturday’s main 400km race. A hot and dusty race day across the Southern Mpumalanga highlands dawned with the riders facing over seven hours in the saddle in search of race glory. Gutzeit dispensed with Creevy shortly after the start and checked out to cross the finish line some 400km later unchallenged and victorious in both the overall classification and in the OR1 class. Behind him Mahoney and Creevy wrong slotted dropping them down to fourth and fifth positions respectively, and promoted Roberts and Torlage into second and third. Mahoney eventually caught and passed Torlage and set off in pursuit of Roberts, but a faulty fifth gear and a collapsed rear moose in the last ten kilometres had him cross the finish line in third position overall, a mere two seconds ahead of Torlage, who clinched the OR3 class victory. The OR 2 class victory unfortunately remains unresolved as Roberts was penalised for missing a marshal tick on his route card which, at the time of writing is under appeal. Nonetheless, class victory will either go to Roberts or Mahoney depending on the outcome of the appeal hearing. The current status is that Roberts was issued with a one hour penalty for his incomplete route card, which drops him down to thirty second overall position, and elevates all the riders that crossed the line behind him up one overall position.
Once again, the competitiveness and reliability of Yamaha YZ’s and WR’s has been proven with race success and class domination. The next round of the National Off Road Championship will take place in Vryburg on the 29th and 30th of April 2011. Report
from Louw
Breedt |
Michael
Creevy held on to finish in a very impressive seventh overall, and second
in the OR3 class, whilst Wade Blaauw crossed the line in tenth position
overall and fourth in the OR1 class, maintaining Yamaha’s sixty percent
of the top ten throughout the event.